Monday 14th May – There’s an old adage that ‘No good deed goes unpunished’. Yesterday afternoon it was a folklore teaching I was rudely reminded of by my ‘good’ buddy karma, in cahoots with his rancid sidekick cancer. Following undertaking five hours voluntary work for MacMillan Cancer Support, I returned home to witness the ‘reward’ for my magnanimousness a sight of my spouse in severe pain from her long standing […]
Friday 11th May – When I woke I’d not much planned for my day. Conspicuous by it’s presence, the white space from my old school paper diary forlornly stared back at me – It’s chaste pages bereft of itinerary. As it was, my morning was anything but empty. If it had been pre-planned in my diary, Friday’s loose leaf would have journalled my morning something like this:- 9am – Commence […]
Tuesday 1st May – Met up with friend and ex-colleague this morning. For 20 years we stood side by side in the metaphorical trenches of IT Incident Management – For a number of reasons, March 2014 was the last time we were comrades in arms. I’ve no intention of elaborating on those reasons, other than to say the shell shock of undertaking the role, along with my wife’s illness, drove […]
Monday 30th April – The moribund month is at it’s dusk – In a few hours April will take a terminal breath, passing over the 2018 calendar baton to May. According to a lad with whom I attended Heathfield Senior High School in the late 1970’s, the month of May was named after his great aunt from Wallsend……. As his aunt was called Geraldine not May, and he was a […]
Easter Monday – As I write, I’m plagued by jaw bone discomfort – A self inflicted facial injury, the consequence of my long-term grinding habit. As the act of grating the jaw makes me gurn, it’s a tick I thankfully only carry out in the privacy of my own home. Gratifyingly, I don’t undertake this aesthetically displeasing practice in, say, my local supermarket. There’s little doubt my gross routine of […]
In yesterday’s narrative Neil Fraser’s Cricket Boots I wrote whimsically of northern England summers past. In particular my mother’s futile obsession with her son’s maintaining sartorial elegance on the cricket field. They were balmy summers in the mid to late 1970’s. Times when the meteorological gods bequeathed us Brits three to four warm months a year. Recompense for the 1974 power cuts and Spangle sweet shortages which dogged the UK public. […]
“Your/their hair need a right good cut!” An adage frequently delivered in my mother’s rich Yorkshire dialect since my 1970’s childhood. Mater’s way of opining that as a consequence of neglectful grooming the individual she refers to looked a”Right scruffy bleeder.”…… Whether it be a messy mullet, unkempt curtain hair, poorly groomed bouffant or a tousled chignon. Deeming that man is defined by first impressions, tidy hair was not only […]
